


Return Not Reset

by bythegrace



Series: Time love, it's only a matter of time [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Acceptance, Angst, F/M, Friendship/Love, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 19:50:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6437959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bythegrace/pseuds/bythegrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They go back to the beginning, and for Fitz it's a slow dawning realization what that really means.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Return Not Reset

**Author's Note:**

> Short little mental meandering. This is kind of a bummer, but I get the sense this might be where this relationship is headed (maybe I'm being negatively influenced by recent interviews). Anyway, I hope it isn't true, I hope that they get a big romantic moment. But my optimism is beginning to wane.

It is weeks, maybe months, before he realizes what is going on.

_What they are._

They are sitting, eating lunch innocuously, when a tall, well-built visiting agent from the ACTU walks by and smiles at her warmly. Her eyes flick up at the agent in the briefest look of admiration and interest and he sees her flush slightly. And when she looks back at him, some emotion, guilt maybe, flits across her face.

That’s when he realizes what had really transpired.

Jemma had asked to go back to the beginning, and like always he had followed where she had led. Back to being friends and collaborators, back to lighthearted teasing and companionship. Back to 'Oh Fitz' and 'Poor Fitz.'

Back to being best friends and _nothing more_

You see, it’s the silently added  _nothing more_ part he didn’t understand at first. He, perpetual fool that he is, had thought she wanted a reset, a chance to do it all over right. For them to fall together without the betrayal and anger and doubt. What she had really wanted was a return. A return to a place where their relationship wasn’t complicated by inconvenient emotions like unrequited love.

And it was working. Their relationship was working. In a way.

What they had now was better than all the fraught sorrow of the prior year, it was better than the anger and estrangement which followed her stint at Hydra. And Good God it was of course legions better than her time swept up by the Kree stone.

So it was _better_. All he had to answer now was if it was _enough_.

If he could live his life with just the small bits of her affection interspersed with her friendship and collaboration. After all, it had been enough before, all he wanted in fact from her for so many years. But he had gone and been an idiot and fallen in love; he was the one who had ostensibly ruined everything.

This, this reset, was their chance to push all that away. It was agony but maybe it was worth it. Because she was smiling again, and if he had been willing to die for her he should at least be willing to ache in silence for her. And at least he knows now, at least he knows that this particular love story won’t have a happy ending, at least not for him.

Just because he loves her, just because the world says they are meant to be, doesn’t mean he is going to get the girl. He wonders absently if there is another love story in the cards for him someday. Or if he will be doomed to love her for all his life (likely). Or if he will go out protecting her in a hail of bullets. He’s sure that such a sacrifice will at least earn him the middle name of one her children. It’s a melancholy thought but he allows his mind to go there. To go to a place where Jemma falls in love again like she did with Will, a world where he acts as her ‘Man of Honor’ or God forbid walks her down the aisle.

He knows that day will come someday soon, she’s just waiting him now. To see if she can keep him. Keep their relationship intact despite the unrequited nature of his feelings. To see if she can have her cake and eat it too. He knows that she can't be truly happy without him in her life, at least in some capacity. He knows that she _needs_ him.

And he’s never been able to deny her what she needed.


End file.
